Alan Ginsberg’s Plutonium Ode

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is therea new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-ous hand, named for Death’s planet through thesea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord ofHades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-King worshipped once
with black sheep throats cut, priests’s face averted fromunderground mysteries in single temple at Eleusis,Spring-green Persephone nuptialed to his inevitableShade, Demeter mother of asphodel weeping dew,
her daughter stored in salty caverns under white snow,black hail, grey winter rain or Polar ice, immemor-able seasons before
Fish flew in Heaven, before a Ram died by the starrybush, before the Bull stamped sky and earth
or Twins inscribed their memories in clay or Crab’dflood
washed memory from the skull, or Lion sniffed thelilac breeze in Eden–
Before the Great Year began turning its twelve signs,ere constellations wheeled for twenty-four thousandsunny years
slowly round their axis in Sagittarius, one hundredsixty-seven thousand times returning to this night

The Bar surveys Plutonian history from midnightlit with Mercury Vapor streetlamps till in dawn’searly light
he contemplates a tranquil politic spaced out betweenNations’ thought-forms proliferating bureaucratic
& horrific arm’d, Satanic industries projected suddenwith Five Hundred Billion Dollar Strength
around the world same time this text is set in Boulder,Colorado before front range of Rocky Mountains
twelve miles north of Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility inUnited States of North America, Western Hemi-sphere
of planet Earth six months and fourteen days aroundour Solar System in a Spiral Galaxy
the local year after Dominion of the last God nineteenhundred seventy eight
Completed as yellow hazed dawn clouds brighten East,Denver city white below
Blue sky transparent rising empty deep & spacious to amorning star high over the balcony
above some autos sat with wheels to curb downhillfrom Flatiron’s jagged pine ridge,
sunlit mountain meadows sloped to rust-red sandstonecliffs above brick townhouse roofs
as sparrows waked whistling through Marine Street’ssummer green leafed trees.

III

This ode to you O Poets and Orators to come, youfather Whitman as I join your side, you Congressand American people,
you present meditators, spiritual friends & teachers,you O Master of the Diamond Arts,
Take this wheel of syllables in hand, these vowels andconsonants to breath’s end
take this inhalation of black poison to your heart, breathout this blessing from your breast on our creation
forests cities oceans deserts rocky flats and mountainsin the Ten Directions pacify with exhalation,
enrich this Plutonian Ode to explode its empty thunderthrough earthen thought-worlds
Magnetize this howl with heartless compassion, destroythis mountain of Plutonium with ordinary mindand body speech,
thus empower this Mind-guard spirit gone out, goneout, gone beyond, gone beyond me, Wake space,so Ah!